


Home is where one starts from...

by truc



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Batman thinks about Gotham, Bruce Wayne & his obsession with Gotham, Buildings, Character Study, Danger, Death, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, Insanity, Love, POV Second Person, Smell, Streets, short descriptive fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-26 11:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17745479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truc/pseuds/truc
Summary: Batman. Gotham.All's said.





	Home is where one starts from...

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote of T.S. Eliot.

You hate this city. 

Almost in equal measure as you like it.

Its stiffening buildings loom over you during the day, foreshadowing the danger awaiting to slice your throat or shoot you in a lonely alleyway.

You walk on the sidewalk with the same trepidation people tiptoe around an active volcano. 

The streets serve no clear purpose. They snake back and forth, keeping or changing names without rhymes or reasons. Sometimes, you even think someone changes them every few weeks to confuse people. Even you can't remember all their particularities, all their toss and turns. The only thing they have in common is they lead nowhere and everywhere at once.

Here, you know stillness means death. Movement? Likewise.

The breeze here always carries the stale stench of futile anger and sterile hope; some days with the added whiff of rotten fish, other days with the discarded and lingering asphalt burns' smell. 

In here, even though it almost ineluctably rains, everything still burns to ash, sputtering remains everywhere like it's an industry the city specializes in. 

If it were true, tragedy would be its main product. 

Maybe that's why you stay; this is the closest you could ever be to likeminded people.

"Bruce," you hear your former ward whisper into the treacherous night, "It's time to go."

You nod. 

Gotham needs insanity to fuel its survival. You'll gladly give yours if it keeps "them" safe.

You can't help but think loving this place may be the most powerful proof of your own insanity.


End file.
